Road Safety
Dail Éireann — 2026-01-15
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Mark Ward (SF), Dublin Mid-West

I join the Minister of State in extending thoughts and deepest sympathies to the 190 families whose loved ones lost their lives on Irish roads last year and the three people who have died so far this year. These are not just statistics and numbers; they are real families who had real lives and it has a big impact on entire communities. There is a crisis level of fatalities and collisions at the moment. I commend the Garda roads policing unit on its work on detection and enforcement but it needs proper resourcing. It is as simple as that.
There are issues with driver behaviour and drivers making conscious bad decisions about what they do and how they get behind the wheel. Drug driving is becoming a real problem. The substances and drugs people take before they get behind the wheel are ever changing. As drugs and people's behaviour are always changing, does the Minister of State have any plans to amend the Road Traffic Act to include other substances for roadside testing?

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-01-15/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:30+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-01-15